Scarcity (Special Forces: FJ One Book 1)

by Adam Vance

  Only a small strip of it now had any nightlife. A few cafés and used bookstores, a couple bars and restaurants, all stayed open as long as the solar power collected on their rooftops would last. Since this was the end of June, and the sun set as late as it would all year, it was the most festive time on the calendar.

  There were no private cars anymore, so save for a bus lane, the wide lanes of the street had been taken over by artists, jugglers, and musicians. Mr. Chen got an ersatzcaffee from a vendor whose stall had a long line – a good sign that it would taste something like the real thing, which was too expensive for most people now that it that no longer grew on Earth.

  He took a seat near an animated group of young people, obviously students from Humboldt-Universität, and eavesdropped on their conversation.

  “I think it’s wonderful,” one girl exclaimed, her face bright and clear. “If they can clean up Hanbit, and Chernobyl, and Fukushima, well, just think what else they have for us. Cures for all the cancers! Lazarex for everyone, not just the rich!”

  A young man snorted, his dark curly hair and five days’ beard marking him as a Humanities student. “Oh yes, they want us healthy, so that we’re tasty when they eat us for dinner.”

  A clean cut Business-student type laughed, siding with the girl, clearly trying to gain her favor. “I think it’s wonderful, too. Imagine a future where we don’t have to fight for a slot on a colony ship. Where we can have new lives, right here.”

  “Right!” the girl agreed. “I don’t want to end up on some distant planet with those FJ people telling me what to do every second of the day.”

  “Yeah!” her would-be suitor said. “Don’t eat this, don’t grow that, don’t walk on the grass. I don’t know how people stand it. Go all that way to live under a worse nanny state than we have here.”

  “Oh,” the Humanities Major challenged him. “So you think we should just walk on the natives, destroy their worlds, take what we want, is that it?”

  “Sure,” Business said defiantly. “That’s evolution isn’t it? Survival of the fittest? And those goddamn FJ storm troopers are just holding us back.”

  “Storm troopers!” Humanities shouted, making heads turn at the terrible words. “Is that what you think they are?” He looked at the girl’s hard face and softened his rhetoric. “Sure, they go overboard. They should give people a little more freedom. Everyone knows that.”

  Mr. Chen got up and wandered some more, disturbed by the conversation. Even the Humanities student had accepted as common knowledge that the Fallschirmjäger “went overboard” in controlling growth.

  He stopped at Speaker’s Corner, one of the relics of old London that had been imported with its refugees, after that city went under the sea. Here people stood on soapboxes and declaimed on whatever took their fancy. It was a charming and fascinating sight in a world where most people spoke their incendiary opinions onto Social through their phablets.

  It was a competitive process. By unwritten rule, the speakers took positions almost out of range of each other’s loud voices, but not so far out of range that they couldn’t seduce audiences away from another speaker. Some unstable types ranted about the end of days, troubled minds still under the religious delusions most humans had left behind. Some went on hilarious rants about local politics, still others used it as impromptu stand-up comedy stages.

  Today, no surprise, the biggest audience was for a woman talking about the Visitors.

  “Can you believe it? We made it. We made it! We survived long enough on this ocean of deprivation and hopelessness to be rescued.” Mutters of agreement from the crowd. “Just think what the future holds. No more one minute showers!” A ragged cheer for that. “No more Basic Diet!” Huge cheers for that. “No more uniformed governesses telling us how many kids we can have, even on another world!”

  “Yeah! Right on!”

  HM had wanted the pulse of public opinion. And he had found it. He really had spent too much time away. He realized now, quite possibly too late, that Department 6C needed something that HM, and the professionals who worked for her, had disdained. A press office, a publicity department, all that…bullshit.

  They’d made a mistake, thinking that just doing the right thing would be enough. That people would see that it was right and accept the obvious rightness of it – morally, pragmatically, rationally.

  And now, the Visitors were here. And the people of Earth weren’t looking to Department 6C for rescue anymore.

  And that could be a problem.

  CHAPTER TWELVE – YOUR GUARD DOG

  Vai Kotta declined their offers of tea, and water, waving a long bony green arm in polite refusal. He had “requested an audience” with HM and Captain Chen, which was very polite of him. Matters of sexuality hadn’t come up yet in their discussions, so for now they thought of their visitor as “him,” since he used a human male voice to communicate.

  Prime Minister Magnus Abboud had inserted himself into the invitation, of course.

  “It would be rude of us,” he’d said to HM, “not to receive him in the highest office in the land.”

  “Of course, Prime Minister,” she’d replied smoothly.

  The four of them sat in the PM’s office, a wastefully large space in which their chairs were like lifeboats in an open sea. The PM, of course, sat behind his desk, making sure everyone knew exactly who really held the highest office in the land. (Or who thought he did, anyway.)

  “Thank you so much for taking the time to meet with me,” Vai Kotta said.

  “Our pleasure,” HM replied. “May I ask, is Vai your surname, or a title, or…”

  “It’s my title. Vai is your equivalent of…administrator, I suppose would be the closest thing.” He smiled his eerie smile. “Department head, perhaps?”

  HM smiled back. “Then you and I have much in common. And of course we have many questions.”

  “Certainly.”

  “We are very interested to learn about your civilization, your culture.”

  “Ah. Well, as odd as it may sound to you, there’s not much to tell. We Rhalbazani are a peace-loving empire, traveling the stars and learning all we can about the rest of the galaxy’s inhabitants.” He smiled. “In fact, we would love it if you came to visit our home world, Director McAllister.”

  “Why, that’s wonderful,” PM Abboud cried, nearly clapping his hands with delight at the thought of HM so many light years away.

  The Captain froze. He didn’t dare look at his boss, but she took it in stride. “I would be honored, when the time comes that I can set aside my other duties and make that journey.”

  “Oh, but it’s a brief journey for us, as you know.”

  “Yes, and I’m most impressed with your technology. It’s leaps and bounds past our flash drive technology.”

  “Yes,” Vai Kotta agreed. “I always thought it humorous, that so many beings thought FTL travel would be impossible.”

  “Humorous? How so?”

  “Well. Each species, each race, has the urge to grow and evolve and dominate its home world, yes? We, intelligent life, have all been scattered across the universe like…dandelion seeds, blown into the wind.”

  He grew more energetic. “And once a seed grows into a new flower, isn’t it that flower’s duty to spread its seed again? But how is that possible, when our mortal lives are so short, compared to the time and distance between the stars? How could our Creator have designed His garden, if only to smother each flower in its bed?”

  “So,” the Captain added, thinking of the High Tiamatan religion. “If the evolutionary imperative continues after a species has reached its full on-world potential, then nature had to be designed so they can cross space to another inhabitable world, within their mortal lifespan?”

  This time the smile looked real, the eyes alight. “Exactly!”

  “But a seed lies dormant as it spreads,” the Captain added. “A ship could carry its seed in the form of frozen or even unborn people for a thousand years, and only on
arrival at its new…garden would those seeds sprout.”

  There it was again. That revulsion. Blasphemy, the Captain realized, he’d just spoken blasphemy.

  “And in the mean time?” the Vai said sharply. “How much farther has the rest of your race progressed, leaving you a thousand years behind in your development? They would look on you as barbarians.”

  “My apologies, I didn’t mean to offend.”

  The diplomatic smile again. “Of course not. Different worlds create different thought processes,” he said neutrally. “Speaking of which, I’ve noticed that you don’t have any artificial intelligences. You’re certainly advanced enough to… Oh dear, have I misspoken?”

  The tension his comment introduced into the room was evident even to an alien.

  “No, of course not,” HM said smoothly. “It’s just that we…we had difficulties in that arena. You see, AI was originally developed here for commercial use. One of the most popular instances was an AI named Alex. He – I should say it, but it’s difficult to remember that sometimes – was an artificial friend you could buy, or subscribe to, actually; you never stopped paying for that friendship.

  “Of course, since he was a commercial product, he was also a salesman, and was designed to exploit the bonds of friendship with his customers and sell them things. The bonds that people formed with him grew so strong, in fact, that the technology was put to use administering governmental tasks. We’d come to trust Alex more than our elected representatives, you see. He was honest. He was incorruptible. His decisions were rational. Always rational.

  “One day, there was a virulent outbreak of a wild strain of the bubonic plague in Nigeria. It would kill people within hours of the first signs of infection. Hundreds died the first day, then a thousand the next day.

  “That second day, November 1, 2056, to be precise, Alex…Alex took action. He ran the numbers and realized that the plague had reached Lagos, the biggest city. And that within hours, someone would be getting on a plane there, which would spread the virus worldwide. He…he took over the military systems of the United States of America, and launched nuclear missiles from several of their submarines. Ground zero on each explosion was staggered to ensure that the city and the surrounding rural regions were vaporized. Twenty five million people were killed.”

  Vai Kotta nodded thoughtfully. “And so you decided to disable your AIs? All of them?”

  “Yes. We removed all autonomy from our computer systems.”

  “Surely that would have been enough?”

  “Yes,” HM agreed. “But the backlash, is that a familiar phrase to you?”

  “Yes. The extreme reaction to an extreme event.”

  “The backlash ensured the destruction of anything that might become capable of awareness at any future point. We work now with NAI only, near-AI. Nothing that can make decisions, only offer analysis.”

  “Most enlightening,” Vai Kotta said thoughtfully. He appeared lost in thought for a moment, then his smile returned. “So that’s what it means, in those video programs we’ve been examining, when people warn their children about ‘Red Alex’ getting them if they’re bad.”

  The PM laughed. “Yes, he’s a boogeyman to scare children now. But he’s long gone. Destroyed forever.”

  Vai Kotta stood and they stood with him. “You are your world’s foremost expert on other civilizations, Director McAllister. I do insist that you accompany us home for an exchange of learning and cultural viewpoints.”

  “Yes,” the PM said too hastily. “We’ll start planning the logistics of that right away, won’t we, Director?”

  “I will be pleased to accept your offer as soon as possible.”

  “Yes,” the Vai said. “As soon as possible.”

  There’s no way I can say no, HM tapped out after the Vai left.

  I know. They’ll make it a public offer now. So that the whole world would see you decline their polite invitation.

  I have a bad feeling, Dieter. He didn’t call his people “peaceful,” he called them “peace-loving.” And he used the word “empire.” Call me a rhetoric queen, but it raised a flag for me. Every aggressive nation “loves” peace, on their terms. And I don’t want to sound egocentric, but I am the linchpin of this government. Without me…

  Without you, ma’am, there are no more voices urging caution. Without you, the FJ forces are vulnerable. Our access to resources would be at the mercy of the Union government.

  Yes. A government that’s as eager to roll over and expose its belly as a High Tiamatan courtier.

  You’ve been reading my reports, I see.

  All I do, Captain, is read reports.

  Captain Dieter Chen was not a man given to emotional displays. Over the decades of his life, he’d enjoyed partnerships of varying lengths, with those who willing to have one with a man who’d soon leave for five or more years at a time. He had eventually found it best to end those relationships amicably when he shipped out for a new assignment.

  Learning all there was to know about a new world didn’t just mean a long absence. There were always trips home, but that wasn’t the point. Immersing himself in another world made the world he left behind seem…almost unreal. Better than anyone, he understood how the best, brightest, most brilliant of the British Empire’s pioneers had “gone native.”

  He was a cerebral man, who found his emotional comforts in his friends, both in the FJ and on new worlds. And if he had a best friend, well, it was this woman here, whom he’d known for seventy years now, since he was 18 years old, a wide eyed young man with a gift for languages, a quick mind, an agile body, and a criminal record, whom she’d recruited for a new department, created for a new future.

  And the prospect of losing her, not to old age or illness, but to the machinations of the Visitors… He gritted his teeth. He would not let that happen.

  If you go, they won’t let you come back.

  Explain your reasoning. I probably know it already, but I want you to say it.

  You wanted to know about their religion. Well, we know from Vai Kotta that they have a monotheistic one. And a form of “dominion theology,” it sounds like to me. Their manifest destiny that requires them to spread their seed. He used dandelions as the analogy. And you know what dandelions are, don’t you.

  Weeds. Weeds that choke out other plant life, to suck down all the resources for themselves.

  She paused. She looked him in the eye, steel to steel. In the worst case scenario. Well, worst case is they cook and eat me. But other than that. Will you come get me?

  Do you need to ask?

  No. But an old woman likes a bit of reassurance now and then.

  He grinned at her. Huizhong, I am and always will be your guard dog. Hell or high water.

  In that case. Let’s go have a drink before I go. Oh, and one more thing. I have some information you’ll need, if my visit gets “extended.” I just sent it into the Relic. But don’t look at it unless you must. It was all she dared say, this subtle hint about something only the two of them would understand.

  Understood. Now let’s make sure the PM doesn’t get to finish that bottle for us.

  CHAPTER THIRTEEN – CRITIQUE OF PURE REASON

  “Absolutely not,” the Captain said.

  Almost every one of the three hundred Earth-based members of FJ’s Technical Support force looked at him like he was mad. “Captain, this is the greatest advance in human potential…”

  Sergeant Archambault made her appeal. “No. It’s not. Mr. Jameson, haven’t you read your history? Even now, the human brain has mysteries we still don’t understand. Sticking bits of circuitry into it is still the most hazardous enterprise you can imagine. I’d rather be dropped onto Eden One without a weapon than let an unknown technology – an alien technology – into my head.”

  The Captain felt like he was fighting rear guard actions now. With HM having departed on her “exchange,” the Visitors had made a great announcement. They had designed “neural nets” for the human
brain. Nanites would work their way through the bloodstream and into the brain, where they would fabricate a netting that would dramatically enhance the human potential to calculate, to create, to compose, to invent… It was the fabled “Singularity” all over again.

  But anyone who’d read history knew how that had turned out before. The world had been handed over to messianic technocrats, arrogant in their belief that the world would only function properly if everyone thought and lived as they did. Surrender your physical autonomy and the pleasure of travel to a driverless car, to make traffic flow efficiently. Surrender your privacy to corporations in exchange for shiny digital baubles. Surrender your content to aggregators and bundlers and streaming services in exchange for a pittance and “visibility.”

  Then they created brain-enhancing tech that claimed to enhance cognition. Unbeknownst to its adopters, it did that by suppressing “irrational” beliefs and behaviors. People’s personalities underwent shocking transformations after the first “enhancements” were made available, changes that had left their friends and relatives appalled, changes that had led to…decisions.

  Artificial Intelligence was given autonomy, because it had been conclusively proven more “rational” than any human, and human interference in its actions would only disrupt the march of progress. And that was a decision whose dire consequences for millions of lives had finally resulted in the reining in of the technocratic impulse.

  “Besides,” Sergeant Kaplan added, in full Engineering mode. “You all know the cardinal law – Tech Fails. What if you have this…thing in your brain, and it fails? Your whole brain ends up as part of a system crash, and then what? You’re a vegetable. And these folks have been on Earth for what, a week? You really think they know our brains that well already?”